Our life in the foothills of Calaveras County, California. The pond is at the center of everything. In case we should forget, the bullfrogs yell it out all summer long. A noisy place, but home.

Pond!

Monday, April 14, 2014

The Path

Brilliant white quartz is a common mineral around here and one of the cool things about it is that it glows in the dark. I discovered this on dark evenings when taking my walk by moonlight. Chunks of quartz littered the trails that neighbor Bob has created on his 20 acres next door. Ever the tidy one (hah!), I would reach down and neatly line them up on one side or the other. Sometimes I just kicked them with my foot.

Over time, these stones accumulated and eventually they made their sporadic appearance all along the entire mile-long path. It became a game. Occasionally I'd get ambitious and add larger rocks that I carried up from the creek. Now on dark nights my way was now lit like a subdued airport runway. I wondered if Bob noticed my augmentations.

He did.

I know this because one recent morning the dogs and I went for an early morning walk and when I reached Bob's trails, something seemed different. It took a moment to figure out. There were tree branches laid out on either side of the path at the entrance from our property to his.

I walked on and started laughing -- he'd lined the path in many places with more branches and, closer to the creek, with rocks.

Walking along, between these sticks laid out on either side of the path, I felt strangely, ridiculously, wonderfully important...sort of like royalty. Really. Under the right conditions, sometimes that's all it takes.

About Me

My husband and I live in a small house by a small pond that is just past the first and smallest foothill of the mighty Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Our nearest town has the rather large name of Copperopolis, but the town itself is also very small. During the school year I drive my small car down into the valley to teach 4th grade at – you guessed it – a smallish school. On both a grand and a personal scale, life is too short and too miraculous to be taken for granted. This chronicle of our life here at Frogpond Acres is one way for me to remain mindful and appreciative of the many not-so-small wonders and blessings that surround us.